Kingston’s moment in the sun ended on this date in 1844 with capital status for the United Province of Canada moving on to the much larger city that was Montreal. Kingston has been chosen as capital of the new province only three-years-before but proved in the end to be too small to continue enjoying the special status. The move was economically devastating and it took decades for the Limestone City to recover.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.